If you’re a fan of jazz, you’re probably familiar with the idea of standards, maybe even without realizing it. Standards are those chestnuts that you hear on dozens of different recordings: take, for instance, the 1931 song “All of Me.” Louis Armstrong did an early version, followed up in the next decade by a young Sinatra, with The Voice giving way 10 years later to bop saxophonists. Each is unique—indeed, even multiple versions by the same artist can be markedly different—yet once you know the tune, you can hum along to just about any of them.
For jazz musicians, these are the classics, the canon that makes up the bedrock of their shared vocabulary. Anyone serious about exploring the art form will likely spend thousands of hours playing these tunes—exploring the chord changes and harmony; playing and replaying the melody, altering it, pushing and pulling at its rhythms until the song is so internalized that it becomes possible to create the beautiful improvisations we commonly think of as jazz.
Other arts have similar practices. As an art student, I studied anatomy by copying the drawings and sculptures of Michelangelo, among others, mimicking his lines so that when the time came to begin my own drawings I already had a thorough knowledge of what lay beneath the skin. Some poets work over their sestinas, sonnets and villanelles.
But it is in film—following on the heels of the theater and opera worlds, of course—that the idea of returning to the classics has truly caught on among the modern arts. One look at the always-growing list of Shakespeare adaptations (including musicals, films noirs, high-school sex comedies, and more) might convince you that we don’t need any new stories at all. But like those jazz songs, the beauty of these reinterpretations is that even if you can hum along, it’s still a new tune.
This week, filmgoers have a chance to catch a new twist on Jane Eyre. In director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s (Sin Nombre) film, the story of the 19th-century novel is overlaid with a more modern sense of urgency and dread. Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) has the lead role as Charlotte Bronte’s famed orphaned heroine, opposite Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) as Rochester, Eyre’s employer and possible love interest.
Arriving at Rochester’s estate Thornfield as a young woman, Jane serves as governess to Rochester’s ward Adele. In her idle moments, Jane and Rochester spark a connection—Bronte was ahead of her time in presenting a heroine every bit the match of her hero—that is repeatedly interrupted by a sense of gloom and secrecy that pervades Thornfield. When the reason for that secrecy is finally revealed, Jane and Rochester must come face to face with their demons—at first alone, and then as one.
It’s refreshing to see a young director—Fukunaga is just 33—take on the classics. Especially so after his success with Sin Nombre, a festival hit about modern gang warfare and illegal immigration; too many directors these days seem to pick a genre and stick with it come hell or high water. Or perhaps Fukunaga saw a link in these tales of estrangement and violence that a less historically inclined director might have overlooked; whatever his motivations, it’s always nice to have another voice in the chorus.
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Also this week: The Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival wraps up its 2011 run with a pair of April 7 screenings. At Amherst College, the 1959 drama Stars shows in a free screening at 4 and 7:30 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Stars was an early film to challenge post-war conventions about collaboration in Eastern Europe.
At Springfield College, a wartime romance is traced in Surviving Hitler: A Love Story. When German soldier Helmuth falls for the half-Jewish Jutta, he is forced to face the true endgame of Hitler’s policies, and joins a plot to kill the Fuhrer. In a time when you thought all the war stories had long been told, Surviving Hitler will surprise you.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
